Don’t Fear the Generative AI Future: IAB’s David Cohen

LAS VEGAS – The growing capabilities of generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers popular apps such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, has led to speculation about how it will affect people in the media, marketing and adtech industries. While new technologies inevitably stir fears about their negative effects, there are many reasons for optimism.

“AI has been part of our digital ecosystem for over a decade,” David Cohen, chief executive of IAB, said in this interview at CES 2024. “Most of the conversations that I’ve had are around: how do you leverage AI for good?”

Publishers, whose business is creating content, have expressed concern about how their copyrighted material is used to train what are known as large-language models at the heart of generative AI. The New York Times last month sued OpenAI and Microsoft, the creators of ChatGPT and other AI platforms, over copyright infringement.

“We have lots of publishers that are part of IAB. They were rightfully concerned about their ingestion of all their content into these large-language models for training purposes,” Cohen said. “That has not been sorted out still. We need to figure out what are the business rules or business terms by which that happens.”

Establishing rules for generative AI can help to realize the full potential of the technology.

“We’re now getting down to the business: how do we forget the hype, forget the sensationalism? How does it drive business forward?” Cohen said. “That’s what we’re gonna see over the next year as we continue to work through some of the challenges.”

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